Hacker News Reader

Musk fairly recently "switched sides" to be republican, presumably trying to pick up a new truck-centric user base in the US south.

Unfortunately, these figures show it backfired badly. He has alienated his mostly left-leaning fanbase, whilst seemingly failing to drum up any new buyers from the new crowd.

View on HN

Car buyers in the US buy cars based on their knowledge of the business owner's political leanings? That seems like the wrong metric.

When was the last time you heard news about political opinions of the owner of Ford, BMW, or Honda?

Musk is an exception.

Once you get high up in the market signaling starts to matter a lot.

A lot of people have a Toyota Tacoma and a commuter sedan in their driveway because they didn't like the image of daily driving an F150 despite the latter yielding comparable results for less hassle (and probably less money).

> Once you get high up in the market signaling starts to matter a lot.

This just sounds so alien to me, does anybody really care that much?

Not if you phrase it like that they don't but the ways people justify their purchases make it obvious.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com